News Story

News Values

The process of deciding which stories, among the almost infinite possibilities on any given day, will be news stories is not simple. Although there may be close-to-universal agreement among journalists and scholars that certain events (a terrorist bombing of an American embassy abroad, for example) are appropriate content for a news story, decisions regarding many other issues, people, and activities are less clear. What could make an important news story in Chicago, for example, may be of no [Page 571]interest to people in Miami. Of all the possible stories that any news organization selects on a given day, what predicts which stories will become today's news?

Since the earliest days of American journalism, there has been rather remarkable consistency among journalists as to what the criteria are for determining whether a story is newsworthy. These criteria are derived from the values, shared by journalists, that define “news.” A review of several prominent news writing textbooks reveals these criteria. Although there is some variation in terminology, the criteria themselves are highly consistent.

Additional criteria that are advanced by some journalists include conflict and human interest.

News Content

Until the last two decades of the 20th century, the content of news stories was dominated by several topics, among them governmental issues, disasters, crime, and sports. Undeniably, many news stories still originate from courts, city halls, capital buildings, and arenas. Such stories are often classified as “hard” news; they will be covered regularly by journalists because of their inherent values. Yet there has been an “explosion of subject matter” (Brooks, Kennedy, Moen, & Ranly, 1992, p. 5) as Americans have begun demanding information on a wider range of topics, many relevant to the individual. Many stories about individual interests (entertainment and travel, new product introductions, and decorating, for example) are classified as “soft news”—that is, they do not necessarily conform to traditional news values, but they are still of interest to news consumers. This shift in content has greatly increased the opportunities for public relations practitioners to contribute news stories.

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